2From Waiting to Running (1998–2004)

Alberta Senator-in-Waiting (1998)

In 1998, the Alberta government decided to hold Senate elections. This was not the first time Alberta had elected senators. In 1989, the PC Government of Premier Don Getty held a Senate election. It was won by Reform Party candidate Stan Waters. The next year Waters was appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in exchange for Alberta’s support for the pending Charlottetown Accord. But Mulroney had made it clear that this was a “one-and-done” deal. The Canada West Foundation—led by Peter McCormick and David Elton—had continued to advocate for Senate reform,¹ as of course did the Reform Party.

Senate reform was not a priority for newly elected Conservative Premier Ralph Klein. He was preoccupied with cutting Alberta’s deficits and debt. But federal Reform Party members had helped him win the 1992 PC leadership race against the favoured, more liberal candidate, Nancy MacBeth. The PC leadership vote came only five weeks after the referendum on the Charlottetown Accord. Reform was the only national party to oppose the accord, and Albertans had voted 60 percent NO. Macbeth had publicly endorsed the accord, while Klein had not. So when MacBeth and Klein were in a virtual tie after the first round of voting, thousands of Reformers bought memberships to block the “Red Tory” from winning. Klein then coasted to an easy victory with over 60 percent of the votes on the second ballot.²

The following year Manning and the Reform Party swept twenty-two of Alberta’s twenty-six ridings in the federal election and began to pressure the Alberta government to hold a second Senate election. The politically astute Klein agreed to this request, but on the condition that his party would not field any candidates. This eliminated the risk of any direct electoral competition with Reform. In Alberta’s first and only other Senate election in 1989, the provincial PCs did field a candidate—Bert Brown—and he was soundly defeated by the Reform Party candidate, Stan Waters.

As I had been writing and speaking about Senate reform for the past decade, it was not too surprising that some of my new friends in the Reform Party—Monte Solberg and Jason Kenney in particular— approached me to become a candidate. Mel Smith, the former deputy minister of constitutional affairs of British Columbia and a strong advocate for Senate reform, also encouraged me.

Initially I was skeptical, so I consulted several friends. Ralph Hedlin encouraged me. Stephen Harper, who had now left the Reform Party because of differences with Manning, recommended against it. Rainer Knopff and Tom Flanagan said, “Why not?” Alberta (like the other three Western provinces) is entitled to six Senate seats. At that time, all were filled, and there were no prospective retirements (mandatory at age seventy-five) for another three years. So even if I were to win, there would be no immediate change in my life. I would become a “senator-in-waiting”—what a comical term. I would stay in Calgary and continue to teach at the university. Because of this, my wife also agreed.

We launched my campaign on May 27 at the old Highlander Hotel on 16th Avenue, NW.³ I was given a rousing introduction by fellow Reformer and Calgary lawyer Gerry Chipeur. For the first but not the last time, we used our friends in the media to draw attention to the launch. Peter Menzies had a big piece in that morning’s Calgary Herald with the headline: “Morton looking to run for senator-in-waiting.”⁴ And it worked. Both print and television media showed up, and we got lots of coverage. It must have been a slow news day. We didn’t see any media again until the end of August!

The next day, I woke up at 4 a.m., got dressed and drove 200 kilometres by myself to Brooks to speak at a 7 a.m. breakfast that Monte Solberg had organized for me. After that, it was on to Medicine Hat for a lunch meeting, also organized by Monte. But after countless cups of coffee, I first had to go to the washroom. When I approached the urinal, I realized that at 4 a.m. I had put my underwear on backwards. So I began to take my jeans off to fix the problem. Monte walked in and said, “What the hell are you doing?!” I explained. He barked: “Forget it. If we get caught in here with your pants down, neither of us will ever get elected to anything again!”

That was pretty much how I spent the next four months, but with my underwear now on properly. We criss-crossed all of Alberta—over 10,000 kilometres in my now not-so-new Ford Explorer—attending dozens of Reform Party summer barbeques and many private receptions organized by supporters. It was retail politics at its best. We had an all-female staff—Janelle Holden, Kim Groenendyk, and Jane Arness—that ran the campaign out of my “campaign office” (i.e., our basement). My travel team consisted of Bambi and an ad hoc collection of young Reformers, mostly undergraduate students at U of C. The average age of our travel team was under twenty-five, which made it fun. One of the most engaging was a young man named Pierre Poilievre, who, twenty-four years later, became the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. We had a budget of $36,000 raised by my friend and finance chairman Greg Fletcher. This paid (poorly!) for our office staff, some campaign brochures, bumper stickers, and our travel. We practised what we preached—fiscal discipline.

My campaign brochures and speeches were an abbreviated version of what I had been writing about for the previous decade: balanced budgets and debt reduction; curbing judicial activism; pro-family public policies; gun laws that target criminals, not law-abiding citizens; effective law enforcement; conservation of natural resources and wildlife; and improved protection of property rights.

These policies were probably more or less accepted by the other six candidates. What distinguished me from them were my messages on “national unity” and the Supreme Court.

With respect to the former, my brochures declared:

Canada cannot afford another generation of the “neverendum” on Quebec and national unity. Three decades have proven that payoffs and appeasement just make the problem worse. As your Senator, I would fight attempts to put Quebec first and the West second.

With respect to the courts, my message was simple and blunt: “I’ve had enough of unelected senators who do too little and unelected judges who do too much.”

The Supreme Court of Canada has become the single most serious threat to provincial rights and regional democracy. Unelected, unaccountable judges are making social and economic policy contrary to the intended meaning of the Charter of Rights. This must be stopped. As your senator, I will continue to advocate for the use of the notwithstanding power. We must return the Court to its proper role of interpreting laws rather than making laws. [See Appendix 3.]

I also had endorsements and organizational connections that the other candidates did not. Publicly, I was endorsed by sitting Reform MPs Jason Kenney and Monte Solberg, and also by Stockwell Day, then Alberta treasurer. I had media endorsements by columnists Lorne Gunter in the Edmonton Journal and Peter Menzies in the Calgary Herald. And of course, Ted Byfield and Alberta Report. Less publicly visible but important to my eventual success were Dale Blue, president of the Responsible Firearm Owners of Alberta (RFOA); and Brian Rushfeldt, executive director of the Canadian Family Action Coalition (CFAC). Both RFOA and CFAC had membership lists that they mobilized on my behalf.

I also got an unexpected boost at the end of August, when the Supreme Court released its ruling the Quebec Secession Reference.⁵ The primary issue was whether a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) by Quebec—i.e., secession—would be legal. The obvious answer was NO. But always wary of offending Quebec, the court hedged its answer with the concession that under international law, success would confer its own legitimacy. The court also added a completely made-up new rule that if the separatists were to win a referendum by a “clear majority on a clear question,” then the rest of Canada has a “constitutional duty to negotiate.” There is nothing anywhere in Canada’s constitution that even remotely supports this. It was judge-made law, pure and simple.

I immediately wrote a column for the Calgary Sun criticizing the court’s ruling as “useless at best and dangerous at worst.” It basically sent the message to the separatists: “UDI is illegal, unless you can get away with it.” I concluded with a quotation from a prominent Quebec MP in the Liberal Caucus that the Chrétien government would now “put itself at the service of the Quebec Liberals as they prepare for a provincial election.” As for the rest of Canada, I warned, “we can sit back and prepare for another round of French kissing. The Neverendum marches on.”⁶

The large headline above my column—MORE FRENCH KISSING—was widely circulated in the media and energized my supporters. It also cost me my weekly column with the Calgary Sun. The following week Licia Corbella, then the editor of the Sun, took me out to lunch, and apologetically informed me that the order had come down from the Quebecor head office in Montreal to terminate my contact. Given the timing, it was a good trade-off for me.

By Labour Day, we had out-travelled, out-organized, and out-worked the other six candidates. In addition to dozens of functions in Calgary, we were in Edmonton twice, Red Deer twice, Medicine Hat twice, and Lethbridge twice, as well as Onaway, Lloydminster, Ponoka, Wetaskiwin, Camrose, Castor, Hanna, Brooks, High River, Grand Prairie, and Peace River. These smaller and more rural communities were Reform Party strongholds, and I had the tacit or explicit support of the local MPs in almost every one.

In the end there were seven candidates competing for the two Reform Party nominations. Bert Brown was the best known—famous for plowing into his wheat field the message “TRIPLE E OR ELSE”—which was easily viewed by airplanes landing at the Calgary airport. I did not have much name recognition outside of Reform Party circles, and the other five had even less. The summer campaign for the Reform Party nominations had virtually no media coverage and was invisible to the larger public.

This all changed on August 28. A sitting Alberta Senator, Jean Forest, unexpectedly resigned her seat. She also declared that she hoped that the winner of Alberta’s October Senate election would be appointed to replace her.⁷ The now open Senate seat gave “a new sense of urgency and legitimacy” to the vote that was previously lacking. It was now “the real thing.”⁸ Over the next two weeks, the Senate election received more media coverage than it had in the previous four months. As one commentator observed, “This development is akin to divine intervention for the Reform Party.”⁹

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein immediately declared that the prime minister must honour the Senate election and that any “snap appointment” would be a “provocation” against Alberta.¹⁰ In Ottawa, the Reform Party immediately went to the Federal Court to request an injunction to prevent the Liberal government from appointing any new Alberta senator until after the October 19 election. This was front page news not just in Alberta papers but in the Globe and Mail.¹¹ Predictably, Alberta newspapers piled on with story after story demanding that the prime minister wait to appoint an elected senator from Alberta.¹² Just as predictably, the Globe immediately published an unsigned editorial denouncing the application for an injunction as an unconstitutional “pressure tactic.” There are “no short cuts to new Senate,” the Globe sternly warned.¹³

This unexpected burst of media attention provided a new relevance and profile for the Reform Party’s Senate convention vote held only two weeks later in Red Deer on September 12. Both local and national media were there to cover it. Over 3,000 votes were cast at polling stations around Alberta, and 700 Reformers came to Red Deer that Saturday evening. When the results were announced, I was the clear winner with 36 percent of the votes. Bert Brown was a solid second with 24 percent, and all the others at or below 10 percent.¹⁴

For the first time in my life, I had to face the cameras and the bright lights not as a professor but as a politician. But I didn’t pull my punches. I promised that if I became a Senator, I would still speak the “plain, unvarnished truths” about Quebec separatism, gun laws, activist judges, prisoner voting, and the anti-family agenda of the gay rights movement.

My most memorable quote of the night was about Quebec and the “national unity” issue. I said that Canada’s $600 billion of debt was a result of a succession of Quebec-based prime ministers—Trudeau, Mulroney, and now Chrétien—buying votes in their home province with borrowed money. “It is simply unacceptable,” I told the crowded hall, “to have one group of Quebeckers negotiating with another group of Quebeckers about the future of our country. This has to end. My message will be simple: ‘No more French kissing!’” Later that night Jason Kenney told me that he had been in the upper-level media gallery when I said this, and the CBC reporters next to him nearly fell out of their chairs.

The next day the results were front page news in both the Calgary Herald¹⁵ and the Edmonton Journal.¹⁶ It was an exciting night for both me and my team. We had worked hard—very hard—all summer, so now we could celebrate. And we did!

We had hardly recovered from our weekend in Red Deer before another political bombshell exploded. On Wednesday, the prime minister publicly called the upcoming Alberta Senate elections “a joke.”¹⁷ The next day, he announced the appointment of Doug Roche to fill Alberta’s vacant Senate seat. Rather than dampening interest in the still-pending October Senate election, it sparked a political firestorm.

Premier Klein publicly called it “a slap in the face” to all Albertans.¹⁸ And that was just the start. “We are all mocked,” declared the Calgary Herald.¹⁹ The Calgary Sun headlined the “SLAP IN THE FACE” message, adding that, “In one swift stroke, Prime Minister Chrétien has again revealed the depths of his disdain for the ideas, contributions and aspirations of Albertans.”²⁰ And it got nastier. According to the Calgary Sun, “when it comes to Ottawa, there are lies, damned lies, and then there are promises from Jean Chrétien.”²¹ The Calgary and Edmonton Suns launched a “Protest Coupon” campaign. Subscribers could sign it and send it in. For the next two weeks, Dave Rutherford, the conservative talk-jock on QR77 radio, had a field day with this issue. He even agreed to deliver the “Protest Coupons” to Ottawa in person on the day of the vote.

That day was October 19, the same day as Alberta’s regularly scheduled municipal elections. The actual voting day was anticlimactic. And much less fun than Red Deer a month earlier. It was clear that Bert and I would win. Alberta’s other political parties boycotted the Senate vote. The only two other candidates were “Independents” Vance Gough and Guy Desrosiers, whom Bert and I had already beaten in the Reform’s nomination vote. Still, 891,583 votes were cast. Bert finished first with 332,766. I was second with 274,126, while Gough and Desrosiers each received about 140,000.

The Calgary Herald did a poll following the election. They reported that 77 percent wanted the winners appointed; and 72 percent agreed that electing two senators was the best way to tell Ottawa that Albertans want Senate reform. On the other hand, 60 percent also said it was a “waste of time” because Prime Minister Chrétien would not appoint the winners.²² And of course, he did not! Predictably the Senate reform issue soon disappeared in both the Alberta and national media. But this did not mean the election was a waste of time. It influenced future political developments in at least four ways.

First, it strengthened the Reform Party both internally and externally. At the micro-level, adding the Senate election to the non-stop summer barbeque tour created energy and enthusiasm for party activists. At the macro-level, it raised public awareness of the regional unfairness issue.

Second, this experience influenced my decision to run for MLA five years later, and eventually for premier. I had enjoyed the summer barbeque circuit, and for me September 12 was a very memorable day. This positive first experience contributed to my decision to plunge into the political deep end.

Third, it deepened my involvement in partisan politics. As one of Alberta’s two senators-elect, I was now invited to all major (and minor!) Reform Party events, including caucus meetings in Ottawa. And as Reform transitioned to the United Alternative and then the Canadian Alliance Party, I spent nine months in Ottawa in 2001 as the party’s director of research and policy.

Last but not least, meeting and speaking with hundreds of Reform activists that summer created a strong volunteer and donor base for my 2006 leadership bid. I would never have received the memberships and votes that we received in 2006—over 36,000—without this motivated network.

Did being elected a “senator-in-waiting” change my life? Certainly not much. In the years immediately following the Senate election, I continued to teach, research, and write full time at the University of Calgary. In 2000, my book The Charter Revolution and the Court Party (co-authored with Rainer Knopff) won a $10,000 Donner Foundation prize for best book in Canadian public policy. That same week, the National Post ran a lengthy article on the Calgary School with the byline “The Bad Boys of Canadian Academia Earn Some Respect.”²³ I published a third edition of my widely adopted textbook, Law, Politics, and the Judicial Process in Canada.²⁴ In November 1999, I was invited to speak at the World Congress of Families II conference in Geneva, Switzerland. My topic: “The Family as the Moral Foundation of Freedom: The Forgotten Dimension of Liberalism.” (See Appendix 2.) In 2004, I spoke on “Provincial Constitutions in Canada” at a conference at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy.²⁵ In 2001, Maclean’s recognized me as one of the twenty most popular professors at the University of Calgary.

I spoke at several conferences in Ontario organized by opponents of the Liberals’ then-pending same-sex marriage legislation and contributed a chapter to a book about “the dangers in Canada’s new social experiment.”²⁶ I gave the Fifth Annual “Mel Smith Memorial Lecture” at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia.²⁷ In 2002, I spent six months in Australia with visiting fellowships at the University of Melbourne and then the Australian National University in Canberra. At the former, I co-authored a paper with Dr. Brian Galligan (a colleague from my graduate school days in Toronto), comparing the role of courts and legislatures in rights protection in Canada, Australia, and the United States.²⁸ At the latter I was asked to speak by the Australian Senate on the Senate reform efforts in Canada. My message: “Senate Envy: Why Western Canada Wants What Australia Has.”²⁹ Bottom line: While my byline now often included “Alberta Senator-in-Waiting,” I was still working full time as a university professor. But the distinction between “public intellectual” and a politician was becoming blurred.³⁰

Canadian Alliance Leadership (2000)

An important exception to this was in 2001. In 2000, when the Reform Party transitioned to the Canadian Alliance Party, there had to be a leadership election for the new party. Understandably, Preston Manning, who was the architect of the transition, ran for leader. But he was challenged by Stockwell Day, the then treasurer (finance minister) of Alberta. I thought that to succeed, the new party needed a new leader. Manning had heroically pioneered Reform from one MP in 1987 to official opposition for the past decade. But in the process, he had made a lot of enemies on the Progressive Conservative side. If we were ever to form a majority government in Ottawa, I knew we would need to win over the PCs. I had also worked with Day on the Klein government’s response to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Delwin Vriend case³¹ and the federal Liberals’ pending same-sex marriage legislation. After much deliberation, I chose to support Day and served as the principal organizer responsible for membership sales in southern Alberta.

The leadership campaign itself was short and polite—virtually no personal attacks. But when the votes were counted on July 8, to my surprise and almost everyone else’s, Day won. He was younger and more charismatic than Preston, and others must have made the same new party–new leader calculation that I had. But Day had a problem. The new party’s caucus were almost all Reform MPs. Most had remained loyal to Manning and did not even know Day. Day had never set foot in the House of Commons, and now he was the leader of the official opposition.

Sensing weakness, the Liberals called a snap election that fall. It worked. With the right-of-centre vote still divided between the Alliance and PC parties, Jean Chrétien won his third consecutive majority Liberal government. While the Alliance increased its seat total from fifty-eight to sixty-six, it was less than expected. Some members blamed this on Day’s performance as leader.

The architect of Day’s leadership campaign, and now his principal advisor, was none other than Jason Kenney. As caucus unhappiness grew, the two of them came to me and asked if I would help. I agreed, and I spoke with some of the dissident MPs. In February I visited Manning in his Calgary office. I told him about the problem in caucus, and that much of it came from former Reform MPs who still had a strong sense of loyalty to Manning. My request—which I thought was quite modest—was that Manning make a public statement supporting Day and encouraging the dissidents to do the same. To my complete surprise, he flatly refused. Day, Manning told me, “simply doesn’t understand.” I walked out of his office in shock.

It did not end there. Several months later, eleven MPs left the Canadian Alliance to sit as Independents. Some returned in the fall, but seven, led by Chuck Strahl and Deb Gray, created a new parliamentary grouping, the Democratic Representative Caucus (DRC), and formed a coalition with Joe Clark’s PCs.

As the caucus situation deteriorated, Kenney and Day now asked if I would come to Ottawa to help the new party. It was an intriguing offer, and, perhaps irrationally, I accepted. So from May to December of 2001, I worked in Ottawa as the party’s director of policy and research. This worked well during the summer, but not once my courses started in September. I taught my classes on Mondays and Fridays; flew to Ottawa Monday night; worked Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in Ottawa; and returned to Calgary on Thursday nights to teach my Friday classes. As much as I enjoyed and benefited from this experience, it was clearly unsustainable. At the end of December, exhausted, I resigned. In January, I left for Australia on a pre-arranged six-month sabbatical.

By the time I returned in June, Day had agreed to a second leadership race to re-establish his authority as the party leader. It didn’t work. With Manning now gone, Stephen Harper decided he wanted to return to the new party. He resigned as leader of the National Citizens Coalition, entered the race to challenge Day, and won.³² This was awkward for me. Harper and I had become friends during his days as the Reform MP for Calgary West. I had also been working closely with him on the Firewall Letter (see below). But I was equally good friends with Day and Jason Kenney, who had been the de facto director of both of Day’s leadership campaigns. As one of Alberta’s senators-in-waiting, I was still being invited to Canadian Alliance caucus meetings, where there were still a lot of raw nerves and personal animosities left from eighteen months of party infighting.

For me, there were several takeaways from all this. It was my first (but not my last!) experience that in politics, in-house fights are more personal—therefore more bitter—than disputes with other parties. It also contributed to my decision the following year to jump into provincial politics. With Harper now running the show in Ottawa, I thought it made sense for me to go provincial. Premier Klein was expected to retire in the next few years, and his PC Caucus was clearly not aligned with the more conservative and anti-Ottawa principles and policies that I shared with the growing number of Reform-Alliance supporters in Alberta.

Last but not least, I was quite bitter toward the DRC MPs for taking down Day before he, in my opinion, had been given a fair chance to prove (or not) his leadership abilities. I made a promise to myself that going forward I would never put personal disappointment ahead of maintaining caucus unity. In theory, I still think this is a good principle. But in retrospect it may have hurt me politically a few years later, when I stuck with Premier Ed Stelmach and the PC caucus for as long as I did (see chapter 9).

Firewall Letter (2001)

Definition: “A firewall is a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized access while permitting outward communication.”

With respect to my evolution from “prof to pol,” 2001 stands out for a second reason. In January, I was one of the co-authors of the “Alberta Agenda” letter to Premier Ralph Klein. Obscure at the time it was published, this political manifesto turned out have a direct impact not just on my life but the next two decades of conservative politics in Alberta.

Advancing the Alberta Agenda was my reason for running for MLA for the Alberta PCs in 2004. My 2006 PC leadership campaign was based almost entirely on the Firewall. After my defeat, the Wildrose Party picked it up and used it to win official opposition status in the 2012 provincial election. In 2019, it became government policy under the newly elected United Conservative Party government of Jason Kenney³³ and his “fair deal” policy initiatives.³⁴ Kenney’s successor, Premier Danielle Smith, then went one step further by campaigning for and then enacting the Alberta Sovereignty Act (2023).³⁵ In short, the same Firewall reforms that were on the fringe of Alberta provincial politics twenty years ago are now front and centre (see chapter 12 for a more detailed discussion).

The “Alberta Agenda” was a public letter sent to Premier Ralph Klein in January 2001 urging him to take specific reforms to increase Alberta’s political autonomy and self-governance. The reforms were intended to insulate and protect Alberta from harmful federal interference—thus its better-known title, the “Firewall Letter.”³⁶

There were five specific recommendations in the Alberta Agenda:³⁷

1. Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan to create an Alberta Pension Plan offering the same benefits at lower cost while giving Alberta control over the investment fund. Pensions are a provincial responsibility under section 94A of the Constitution Act, 1867; and the legislation setting up the Canada Pension Plan permits a province to run its own plan, as Quebec has done from the beginning. If Quebec can do it, why not Alberta?
2. Collect our own revenue from personal income tax, as we already do for corporate income tax. Any incremental cost of collecting our own personal income tax would be far outweighed by the policy flexibility that Alberta would gain, as Quebec’s experience has shown.
3. Start preparing now to let the contract with the RCMP run out in 2012 and create an Alberta Provincial Police Force. Alberta is a major province. Like the other major provinces of Ontario and Quebec, we should have our own provincial police force.
4. Resume provincial responsibility for health care policy. Albertans deserve better than the long waiting periods and technological backwardness that are rapidly coming to characterize Canadian medicine. Alberta should also argue that each province should raise its own revenue for health care—i.e., replace the Canada Health and Social Transfer cash with tax points as Quebec has argued for many years. Poorer provinces would continue to rely on Equalization to ensure they have adequate revenues.
5. Use section 88 of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Quebec Secession Reference to force Senate reform back onto the national agenda. Our reading of that decision is that the federal government and other provinces must seriously consider a proposal for constitu tional reform endorsed by “a clear majority on a clear question” in a provincial referendum.

In one sense, these reforms were quite modest. As noted, most were already being done by Quebec, Ontario, or both. So no big deal, right? Wrong! The very fact that Quebec was the model for these proposed reforms immediately raised the spectre of a hidden agenda—Alberta separatism. While this was clearly not our intention at that time, it alarmed critics. There has always been a small but marginal separatist element on the fringes of Alberta politics. But it was largely rural and associated with leaders no one had ever heard of. The Firewall Letter was different. This was the first time in Alberta’s history that reforms of this nature had been publicly endorsed by recognizable public figures.

The signatories included, first and foremost, Stephen Harper, then president of the National Citizens Coalition, but until recently Reform MP and one of Preston Manning’s most influential advisors. Also signing were Andy Crooks, a Calgary lawyer and president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation; Ken Boessenkool, former policy advisor to Stockwell Day; and then three members of the Calgary School—Tom Flanagan, Rainer Knopff, and myself.³⁸

The immediate catalyst for the Firewall Letter was the just-completed 2000 Federal election, during which Prime Minister Chrétien had singled out Alberta for particularly harsh criticism, especially on health care reforms. His continued refusal to appoint Alberta’s elected senators was another irritant. Chrétien had also signed the Kyoto Accord in 1995 without any consultation with Alberta or Saskatchewan. There were fears even then that this could be the precursor of a second National Energy Program—fears that have turned out to be justified. There was also growing frustration with failure of the “unite the Right” efforts. The continued vote splitting between Reform (then Alliance) and the PCs had just given Chrétien and the Liberals a third consecutive majority government.

The letter was Harper’s idea. He’d had a falling-out with Preston Manning and had chosen not to run for re-election as a Reform MP in 1997. According to Tom Flanagan, the letter was part of Harper’s “long-term strategy … to force the federal government back into a more narrowly circumscribed sphere of constitutional jurisdiction.”³⁹ It might have been. But I thought it was also setting the stage for Stephen to take a run at the premier’s office in Alberta when Klein chose to step aside, which was then being publicly discussed. I had come to know Stephen fairly well over the previous decade, and I did not think he was finished with electoral politics. I turned out to be right, but in the end, he went federal rather than provincial.

By the time I returned from Australia in June 2002, Stephen had defeated Stockwell Day in the leadership contest for the Canadian Alliance Party. This was good for Stephen and good for the Alliance. But now he (and Flanagan, as his policy advisor) was off to Ottawa and the federal political arena. This left the Alberta Agenda without any public advocate in Alberta.

Enter Pat Beauchamp and Alberta Residents League (ARL). Notwithstand-ing its innocuous sounding name, the ARL played a crucial role in promoting the Alberta Agenda across the province over the next four years.

I had nothing do to with the creation of the ARL. But in the fall of 2002, I was asked by the late Stan Grad to come to a meeting with Beauchamp. I had met Stan through our mutual involvement in the Reform Party during the 1990s, and he had contributed financially to my 1998 Senate campaign. It turned out that Stan—and his network of affluent friends—very much liked the Alberta Agenda and were financially supporting the ARL. The ARL grew quickly. Soon it had a board of directors,⁴⁰ a province-wide advisory committee,⁴¹ and a website. At its peak, the ARL had 2,000 dues-paying members. Beauchamp was a great organizer, but not an effective public speaker. Stan thought I could and should fill that role. And in the end, I did.

In March 2003, the ARL launched its campaign with a town hall meeting in Drayton Valley. Ninety people showed up to hear Link Byfield and myself explain and advocate for the Firewall reforms.⁴² By year end, the ARL had held ten such meetings across Alberta. These were well advertised and well attended—an average crowd of over 150 persons. I was usually the featured speaker. These town halls received good local media, and the ARL started getting positive coverage in the Edmonton and Calgary papers from conservative columnists like Neil Waugh, Licia Corbella, Danielle Smith, Link and Ted Byfield, and Barry Cooper. It was at the Drayton Valley meeting that Chris Matthews, a recent graduate of the political science MA program at the U of C, came up with the slogan—MORE ALBERTA, LESS OTTAWA. These four words so succinctly captured our message that we adopted it immediately. By the end of 2004, there were a dozen large billboards across the province projecting this message to everyone who drove by.

The success of the ARL can be measured by the Klein government’s response. Initially, Klein all but dismissed it. In February 2001, Klein conceded that while Alberta had been mistreated by Ottawa, he rejected the “sense of defeatism that underlies the notion of building a firewall around this province.” “Retreating behind our provincial boundaries is not,” he wrote, “a response that would be supported by the vast majority of Albertans.”⁴³

Fast forward to November 2003. After eleven months of ARL town halls, the Conservatives were beginning to feel some heat on these issues. The PCs’ annual general meeting in November 2003 featured a panel on “Strengthening Alberta’s Place in Confederation.” In his keynote address, Premier Klein criticized the “arrogance of Ottawa Liberals,” and “cited a litany of longstanding concerns, including the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board, the gun registry, the Kyoto Accord, and senate reform.”⁴⁴ He then announced the formation of an MLA committee that would hold forums across the province to listen to Albertans on this issue.

Media commentary quickly linked the creation of the committee to the ARL town halls. According to one commentator, the premier admitted that “the Alberta Agenda had captured the imagination of a sizeable chunk of those within his party, as well as many within the broader public.” And, the writer continued, “Ralph rarely misreads the mood of his party or his province.”⁴⁵ According to another, “It’s strategically important for the Tories to lead the discussion of firewall issues …. By talking about it themselves, they prevent an Alberta right-wing party from taking over the issue.”⁴⁶ In the first three months of 2004, the MLA committee held twelve public forums. I appeared before the committee at its final meeting in Calgary. I recommended adoption of the Firewall reforms: “What would be irresponsible about urging the government of Alberta to fully exercise the constitutional powers it already has?”⁴⁷

In the end, the committee’s report rejected the reforms proposed in the Alberta Agenda, declaring that it would be more productive “to build bridges rather than firewalls.” This response was disappointing but predictable. The committee’s public hearings were more an exercise in public relations than a true consultation. Nonetheless, the committee gave new attention and energy to the “more Alberta, less Ottawa” message.

In addition to the ARL, I had also formed my own small advocacy organization, the Alberta Civil Society Association (ACSA). I used the ACSA to support my criticisms of a series of Supreme Court decisions based on the Charter of Rights dealing with issues like prisoner voting, sexual orientation, and same-sex marriage. I criticized these decisions in part because there was no explicit language in the Charter to support them. Indeed, there was clear evidence that the framers of the Charter intentionally chose to exclude these issues. But I also criticized them for weakening, both symbolically and in practice, institutions like family, community, and citizenship that nurture the altruistic and law-abiding citizenry that sustain liberal democracies. The ACSA’s most visible impact was a colourful bumper sticker whose message was self-explanatory.

We sold over 18,000 of these, and they were a common sight on the backs of cars and trucks all over Alberta for several years.

In addition to speaking at ARL town halls, I became involved with several grassroots protests on issues of importance to Alberta Reformers. In October 2002, I joined Premier Ralph Klein and several Alliance MPs in Lethbridge to speak at a rally to support the thirteen Alberta farmers who were being arrested for exporting their own grain without the prior approval of the Canadian Wheat Board.⁴⁸ Farmers in Ontario and Quebec were free to sell their own wheat however they chose. But farmers from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta were required by federal law to sell all their wheat through the Wheat Board. At the time of their arrest, Western farmers could sell their durum wheat south of the border for C$8.50 a bushel, but only C$3.50 if they sold to the board. Surrounded by the farmers and their families, I spoke to about 500 persons who attended the rally in Lethbridge. Behind us was a huge banner declaring: “WELCOME TO CANADA: THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THE FREE WORLD THAT JAILS ITS FARMERS FOR SELLING THEIR OWN WHEAT.”⁴⁹ And go to jail they did.

I also became involved in the opposition to the Liberals new firearms registry, Bill C-68. Enacted in 1995, Bill C-68 required all gun owners to apply for and maintain a federal licence and also to register with the federal government all hunting rifles and shotguns. These “long guns” are used only for hunting and target practice. They play virtually no role in the criminal use of guns or gun deaths. But C-68 would make duck and deer hunters like myself and tens of thousands of other law-abiding Canadians potential criminals if we did not register our guns. I registered mine—all seven of them—but then joined the grassroots movement calling for the repeal of C-68.

The new federal gun registry provoked a strong negative reaction from gun owners across Canada. In Alberta, the Klein government responded by using its reference power to challenge the constitutional validity of C-68. Alberta argued that this kind of legislation falls within the provinces’ jurisdiction over “property and civil rights,” not under Ottawa’s authority for criminal law. Criminal law addresses actions that harm others, Alberta argued. Simple ownership harms no one and should not be deemed criminal. Alberta’s challenge was joined by several other provincial governments and ended up before the Supreme Court.

I had written several op-eds criticizing C-68 on both legal and policy grounds. This led to my meeting the late Dale Blue, the founder and executive director of the Responsible Firearm Owners of Alberta (RFOA). Working with Dale and RFOA, we raised sufficient funds to intervene in the constitutional challenge to C-68 before the Supreme Court. We hired Dallas Miller, a lawyer from Medicine Hat and fellow Reform Party activist, to represent us, and all three of us went to Ottawa for the oral arguments in February 2000.

In June, the court handed down a decision upholding C-68 as a valid exercise of the federal government’s section 91 criminal law jurisdiction.⁵⁰ We were disappointed but not surprised. Several feminist organizations had intervened to support C-68. We knew that the court—then and now—almost never says “NO” to feminist intervenors.⁵¹ I responded with yet another op-ed: “Gun control legal battle lost, but the war is far from over.”⁵²

In 2002, I wrote a lengthy (39-page) report on how Bill C-68 could be challenged for violating numerous sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights. This work was funded by the RFOA and its sister organizations in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. I first publicly presented this work at an event organized by the Recreational Firearms Community of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon in October 2002. (After which they arranged for a most successful duck and goose shoot on shores of Lake Lenore!)

Several months later, on a cold and snowy January 1, 2003, I spoke in Edmonton at a rally to support Oscar Lacombe and his refusal to register his hunting rifles.⁵³ Oscar Lacombe was a 74-year-old Métis veteran of the Korean War and former sergeant-at-arms in the Alberta Legislative Assembly. Working with the RFOA, Oscar had announced that he was not going to register his long guns. As had been advertised, on January 1, Oscar carried his .22 calibre rifle—unloaded, bolt-removed, and sealed in plastic—to the steps of the Legislative Assembly—where he had worked for over a decade—and declared to a cheering crowd: “I won’t register this gun, and I won’t hide. I will not submit to this unjust and dangerous law. … Free I was born, and even if you put me in jail, free I will remain.”⁵⁴ But he was still arrested as soon as he finished.⁵⁵ Several years later, the Stephen Harper Conservative government (2006–2015) abolished both the long gun registry and the Wheat Board. But this was too late to help Oscar Lacombe and the thirteen Alberta farmers who went to jail for their non-violent civil disobedience to protest unjust and ineffective federal laws.

None of these “extra-curricular” political engagements by themselves —the Firewall letter, the six months in Ottawa, the Alberta Residents League, the Wheat Board, or long-gun rallies—led me to take the last step: to seek an elected political office as the candidate of a political party. But their cumulative effect did. With Harper now gone to Ottawa; with Jean Chrétien and the Liberals having won their third consecutive majority government; and with neither Klein nor anyone in his cabinet showing much interest in the Alberta Agenda reforms, I decided that Alberta needed new leadership and that I was the person to provide it.

Several friends and supporters had already encouraged me to seek a Canadian Alliance nomination and go to Ottawa to join Harper. But my six months there as director of research had left me with a sour taste for Ottawa. Like all national governments today, the permanent government—the bureaucracy that administers the modern welfare state—is just as powerful as the elected governments that come and go. In Ottawa, the bilingualism requirement for civil servants means that over half of our federal bureaucracy is French—much higher in the senior positions—with little to no personal experience or attachment to Western Canada. Bilingualism is less about language and more like an ideology that prioritizes national unity, and national unity is understood as keeping Quebeckers happy.⁵⁶ During my time in Ottawa, I soon learned that—even in the Canadian Alliance caucus—the first question asked about any new policy or press release was: How will this play in Quebec? For me, that was the problem, not the solution. Besides, Harper did not need (and probably did not want) my help. Alberta did.

So on February 1, 2003, I organized a meeting in Red Deer with people with whom I had worked since the 1998 Senate election. Officially, the invitation was for a meeting on how to advance the reforms proposed in the Alberta Agenda. I invited twenty-four individuals. Several were personal friends and fundraisers. The rest represented a variety of small-c conservative groups I had supported or helped in recent years. In the end eighteen attended, mostly from central and southern Alberta.⁵⁷ The groups included Farmers for Justice, Canada Family Action Coalition, Responsible Firearm Owners of Alberta, Alberta Federation of Women United for Families, Alberta Residents League, and Alberta Property Rights Initiative.

The agenda consisted of a variety of strategies on how best to influence public opinion to support the reforms recommended by the Alberta Agenda, plus the more recent issues of the Wheat Board, Kyoto, and the gun registry. Beauchamp said the ARL would continue with its town halls. Byfield and Alberta Report magazine were planning a major conference, Western Assembly II. Andy Crooks reported that the Fraser Institute was undertaking a new “Alberta Agenda” research project to flesh out some of the proposed reforms. There was a proposal to form a new, separatist party, but there was much more interest in how to influence the Klein Tories, including nominating new candidates. It was in this context that I announced that I had decided to run for the leadership of the provincial PC party when Klein retired. I explained why and asked for their support. None were too surprised, and all were supportive. I drove back to Calgary that afternoon with a sense of optimism about the journey I was about to begin.

This ended abruptly as I watched the evening news. Earlier that day, NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia had disintegrated as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. In Alberta, seven students from the Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School on a cross-country skiing trip had been buried and killed by an avalanche just west of Rogers Pass. Was all this tragic news a foreboding omen for my new venture?

MLA for Foothills-Rocky View (2004)

I had asked those who met with me in Red Deer to keep my plans confidential until I publicly announced them. But it did not stay secret for long. In April, Ted Byfield wrote a piece in the Edmonton Sun, “Why Ted Morton should become premier.”⁵⁸ This was a general endorsement and did not mention any specific plans. But by July, the cat was out of the bag when Tom Olsen published a piece in the Edmonton Journal with the byline, “Firewall group eyes premier’s office.”⁵⁹ This news would not have been received with any enthusiasm in the Klein cabinet, and it complicated my next move.

My first step was to win a nomination for a Progressive Conservative constituency. The obvious choice was Calgary-Varsity, where we lived. The sitting MLA was Murray Smith, then minister of energy, who was widely expected not to run again in the 2004 provincial elections. This should have been simple. But it was not. It quickly became apparent that Smith was not willing to disclose his plans or co-operate with me. We surmised that this was not by accident; that it reflected advice from Premier Klein, his former chief of staff Rod Love, or both.

Klein’s inner circle was not a fan of the Firewall agenda, and they did not want me in the PC caucus. Klein had built a big-tent Conservative party, and they feared I might fracture it—opening up cleavages between the more conservative rural wing and more moderate urban members.⁶⁰ Rod Love had additional reasons. It was widely known that Jim Dinning, Klein’s former minister of finance, planned to run for leader when Klein chose to step down. Love had already agreed to manage Dinning’s campaign. The last thing either man wanted was Ted Morton in the leadership race. Murray Smith obviously shared these views, so the door in Calgary-Varsity was closed tight. But if not there, where?

Fortunately for me, there was another option. Alberta’s electoral map had been redrawn based on the most recent ten-year census. The map contained a new riding just West of Calgary: Foothills-Rocky View. It stretched from Crossfield in the north to Turner Valley and Black Diamond in the south. In between, it included the smaller communities of Bragg Creek, Millarville, and Priddis, and the acreage communities of Springbank and Bearspaw. Highway 22, the “Cowboy Trail,” ran down the middle.

Foothills-Rocky View was just as beautiful as its name. And the good news did not stop there. All these communities were solid PC supporters provincially and Reform-Alliance supporters federally. The latter opened the door for me, as I had met and worked with many of these conservative activists in Reform Party meetings and campaigns. Both the federal MPs for these areas—Dr. Grant Hill (Macleod) in the south and the late Myron Thompson (Wildrose) in the north—had become friends and now strong supporters.

The bad news was I didn’t live there. I would be a “carpet-bagger”—a non-resident coming in from outside the riding. As in most parliamentary systems, this is legal in Canada, but still not popular, especially in rural and small-town Alberta. So that was my dilemma: if I could win the PC nomination, I was all but guaranteed to win in the general election. But winning the PC nomination was far from certain. I needed a local champion—someone lots of people knew and trusted. Enter Harvey Buckley.

How to describe Harvey? Maybe a senior version of John Wayne, except that he was friendly. At six-foot-three, he was tall, lean, and handsome, with a smile that made you smile back. His family had ranched west of Calgary for several generations. Harvey knew almost every rancher in both Foothills and Rocky View counties. Over the first six months of 2004, he drove me to their front doors and personally introduced me. Harvey had been active in local Reform Party organizing and events, which is how we had first met. He also founded Action for Agriculture, an organization that works to protect native grasslands and minimize the fragmentation of ranch and farm properties surrounding Calgary. Without the hundreds of hours of help and support from Harvey and his wife, Margaret, I doubt that I would have won the PC nomination in Foothills-Rocky View. And I did not win it by much!

There were three other candidates vying for the nomination. Unlike me, none had any public profile outside their own communities. But, also unlike me, they each had a home base in the riding. Tim Anderson was the mayor of Redwood Meadows. Jerry Muelaner was the chair of the Foothills School Division. And Spence Bozak was well known and well liked in the Bragg Creek area. We knew that to win, we would have to outwork and out-organize the other three candidates.

The vote was set for June 18 and 19. The first day of voting was at the Red Deer Lake Community Centre in the south end of the riding; the second at the Cochrane Curling Club in the north. At the end of voting hours in Cochrane, the votes from both polling stations would be counted and the winner announced. The vote was by preferential ballot. Each voter indicated their first and second choice. To win required 50-percent-plus-one of total votes cast. If no candidate achieved that threshold, the candidate with lowest number of votes was dropped and his supporters’ second preferences were redistributed to the remaining candidates. We were quite confident of a first ballot win. We had knocked on more doors, sent more letters, and made more GOTV (get out the vote) phone calls than the other three candidates combined. But we were quickly reminded that it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

As we waited outside the Cochrane Curling Club for the results to be announced, we noticed a small contingent of PC Party operatives in the crowd. These included Thompson Macdonald and Rod Love, Klein’s former chief of staff and the unofficial chairman of Jim Dinning’s unofficial leadership team. They certainly weren’t there to support me, so why were they here? Had the party been helping one of the other candidates? It made us a bit nervous.

Just before 9 p.m., the results were announced. On the first round, I received 309 preferences, well ahead of second-place finisher Tim Anderson at 227—but at 44 percent of the total, still less than the 50-percent-plus-one required to win. We became a bit more nervous. The fourth-place finisher—Muelaner—was dropped, and his supporters’ second preferences were counted. This only added 13 votes to my total, but 52 to Anderson’s. I was still first but still short of 50 percent-plus-one. Now Anderson was only 43 votes behind me and we were more nervous. So Bozak was dropped, and his supporters’ second preferences redistributed. When the count was done—and it was done twice—I had squeaked by with 50.3 percent of the votes: 342 to 338, only four more than Anderson.

We celebrated, but it was more in relief than joy. How had it become so close? Was there an anyone-but-Morton campaign that we were unaware of? That evening, Tim said he accepted the results. He even made the motion to destroy the ballots and make the decision unanimous, which was customary in PC nomination elections. That only lasted forty-eight hours. By Monday, he had changed his mind.⁶¹ He told media that he had reason to believe that persons from outside the riding had participated and that he was going to demand a second election. Constituency President Blair Barkley asked if he had any evidence of this. He said he had none. Barkley communicated to us that he found Anderson’s request “highly irregular and serving no constructive purpose.” After five days of limbo and media coverage, Anderson suddenly reversed again and declared he accepted the results.⁶² We breathed a sigh of relief but became suspicious. Why had he done this? Had he been encouraged to? If so, by whom? And for what reason?

I was now the official PC Party candidate. But the anticipated provincial election was at least five months away.⁶³ It was a forgone conclusion that whoever won the PC nomination for Foothills-Rocky View would be elected. It was a strongly conservative riding. We joked that even my dog Coulee—who often came with me door-knocking—could be elected there. So to say I spent the next five months campaigning would be technically accurate but misleading. It was nothing like the ten hours a day, six days a week campaigning I did leading up to nomination vote. I door-knocked on some Saturdays but not all. I did endless meet-and-greet coffee parties hosted by supporters who invited their neighbours to meet me. When the campaign became official in late October, we opened small campaign offices in Cochrane and Black Diamond; hosted still more meet-and-greet coffee receptions; and participated in two debates with the other three candidates. We ran ads in all the four weekly newspapers. But we did no direct mail or GOTV phone banks. That fall, I taught my normal course schedule at the university, and even went duck hunting a few times with Coulee.

What we did do was to continue to plan for my eventual run to become the leader of the party when Klein decided to step aside. I met with my campaign team on almost a weekly basis. They continued to raise money and build mailing lists. To this end, we organized a major fundraising lunch at the Palliser Hotel in mid-September. Technically it was to raise funds for the constituency association and the upcoming fall election. But candidates for rural ridings outside of Calgary don’t hold fundraisers at the Palliser. Everyone knew it was in effect my first public leadership event. Just weeks earlier, the Western Standard (the Byfields’ successor magazine to Alberta Report), published an issue with my picture on the cover with the headline: “PREMIER-IN-WAITING?”⁶⁴ Maybe this explains why we were able to sell out the event—over 400 seats at $125 a plate. It also explains the icy reception I got six weeks later at the PC Party’s “candidates’ school” in Red Deer.

I used my speech at the fundraiser to lay out my vision for the future of Alberta—the “more Alberta, less Ottawa” reforms proposed in the Alberta Agenda. I don’t think I even mentioned Foothills-Rocky View. Other than the fact that a smiling Jim Dinning was sitting at a table directly in front of the podium, what I remember most about the event were two funny incidents. The first occurred two days before the luncheon. Our event organizer, Catherine Scheers, insisted that I visit the Palliser to see how she had set up the Palliser’s ornate Crystal Ballroom. Because of the rectangular shape of the room, she had to put the screens for my PowerPoint at both ends of the room, rather than behind the podium. I said this was fine and started to leave. Not so fast, she said. As long as we’re here, I’ve arranged for you to taste what we’ll be serving for the luncheon. As if I cared! But I demurred and sat down.

The next thing I knew there was a steaming hot roasted chicken in front of me. “Chicken!” I shrieked. “We can’t serve chicken! My people eat beef! I’ll never get elected to anything if we serve chicken!” Startled, Catherine conferred with the hotel representative and then explained that on such short notice, serving beef would raise the per plate cost by 75 cents. I lost it again. “I don’t care if it costs three times that, we have to have beef!” And have beef we did: flank steak, so chewy you could have played hand-ball with it. But nobody (except my wife) cared. And it didn’t cost a penny more! Thank you, Palliser!

The second incident was my introduction by Lee Richardson. I did not know Lee well, but he was best friends with my good friend the late Ralph Hedlin. Lee was well connected with many of the big donors to the PC Party, and it was Ralph’s advice that it would be good for me politically to be introduced by someone like Lee. Lee was also known for his sense of humour, and he didn’t disappoint. He began by reminding the audience of how I had been fighting for a “fair deal” for Alberta over the preceding years: opposing the Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accords; working for Senate reform and the Alberta Agenda; supporting the farmers who went to jail for their protest against the Wheat Board; standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Oscar Lacombe in his civil disobedience challenging the Liberal gun registry. “As you can see,” he concluded, “Ted is very good at getting his friends arrested.” The entire room burst into laughter. It was a great icebreaker.

Klein finally dissolved the Legislative Assembly on October 25. This triggered a twenty-eight-day campaign, setting the election date for November 22. The day before the announcement, all PC candidates were summoned to Red Deer for a “candidates’ school.” The purpose of these “schools” is very simple: To make sure candidates know what the party’s official talking points are and not—repeat, NOT—to vary from them anytime over the next four weeks. Here’s the script. Read it and stick with it. This is standard fare for all parties in all provinces. The last thing any party wants are rookie candidates freelancing new policy announcements in their local races. I knew this in advance and didn’t think I needed to drive to Red Deer to hear it. But of course, I did.

For me, two things made this “candidates’ school” memorable. The first was that I almost got killed on the way there. Just east of Bowden, my Ford Explorer hit a patch of ice; did a 360-degree spin; crossed the two southbound lanes; crashed through the guardrail; and plunged nose-first into a water-filled, ice-covered culvert on the other side of Highway 2.⁶⁵ An RCMP officer arrived within minutes. Once he ascertained that—somehow—neither I nor Harvey Buckley was injured, he called a tow truck and then told us: When you get to town, buy a lottery ticket, because today is your lucky day. He was right.

But of course, we couldn’t go to town and buy a lottery ticket. We had to get to Red Deer, and we did. That too was memorable, but for very different reasons. There were eighty-seven PC candidates there, most with a manager, plus Premier Klein and dozen or so of his campaign team. Of the almost 200 people in the room, I knew fewer than ten. This was a bit uncomfortable. And it didn’t get better. Was anyone happy to see me or congratulate me for winning the Foothills-Rocky View nomination? Apparently not. The only party official who greeted me was Peter Elzinga, the president of the Alberta PC Party. The drive home for Harvey and me was pretty quiet. The article in the Edmonton Journal two weeks later explained why: “Veteran Tory MLAs are eagerly awaiting Morton’s arrival at the legislature after the election, simply so they can cut him down. There haven’t been this many knives in a welcoming committee since Julius Caesar dropped by the Senate.”⁶⁶

The twenty-eight-day campaign in Foothills-Rocky View was uneventful until the last day. As I was leaving our campaign office in Black Diamond, a television reporter, Darrel Janz from CFCN Calgary, was waiting for me. His first few questions were innocuous enough, but then he hit me with a surprise. “What about the allegations that your nomination election last June was fraudulent, and that even if you win tomorrow, you may not be able to take a seat in the legislature?” I was dumbfounded. My inner voice wanted to say, “What the fuck are you talking about?” But my outer voice prevailed: “That was settled months ago,” I calmly replied. “Who told you this?” Janz didn’t answer. But he did broadcast the interview on the evening news a few hours later.

This ambush interview was just the beginning of an even more bizarre evening.⁶⁷ Just after 7 p.m., I began getting phone calls from members of my campaign team about rogue autodial calls that were repeating the same message to residents in the riding: that there was “a voter fraud investigation targeting PC Candidate Ted Morton’s campaign,” and that this could disqualify me even if I were to win the election the next day.⁶⁸ It turned out that there were approximately 11,000 such autodial calls that evening, all with sophisticated call-blocking that prevented tracing their source.⁶⁹ It was a classic eleventh-hour drive-by smear attack.⁷⁰

That was the bad news. The good news was that it had no effect on the outcome of the election. When the ballots were counted the next day, I had carried all fifty-seven polls and won over 60 percent of the votes. I had a total of 6,782 votes, and the next closest candidate, Liberal Herb Coburne, had 1,956.

We filed complaints with both Alberta’s chief electoral officer and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.⁷¹ CRTC rules prohibited autodial calls after 7 p.m. CRTC also requires such messages to identify who the caller is and how to contact them. The Alberta Election Act prohibits anyone other than candidates, political parties, and constituency associations from using voters lists. The chief electoral officer asked the RCMP to investigate. The CRTC asked Telus to turn over telephone records for that evening that could show who sent the automated messages.⁷² If we could have identified the person or persons who organized the robo-call, we could have also sued them for libel.

In the end, the organizers of the phantom robo-call were never identified, and no one was ever charged. But we were certain that none of the other candidates nor their parties would or could have organized such a sophisticated eleventh-hour robo-call. They had neither the motive—they knew they were going to lose—nor the money to launch such an attack. And for the same reasons, it was not Tim Anderson. He explicitly denied any involvement, and we believed him. This could only have come from someone or some group in the PC Party with access to the voters lists and the money to pay for it. And the motive? Clearly to impugn my integrity and damage my reputation. The leadership race to replace Klein had begun. As Graham Thomson had previously reported, the knives were already out.⁷³

At the time, the phantom robo-call incident just made me angry. But in retrospect, it may have been an early symptom of the PC dynasty’s decline and fall. The election results clearly showed that Klein and the Tories were losing support on both the Left and the Right. The PCs kept their majority with sixty-two seats, but this was eleven fewer than they’d previously held. Their percentage of the popular vote dropped sharply, from 62 percent to 47 percent. The Liberals won sixteen seats—more than double what they’d held before. Many of these Liberal wins were made possible by growing support for the new, more conservative Alliance Party, which resulted in vote splitting in urban ridings. The Alliance finished second in a number of rural ridings, and elected its first MLA, Paul Hinman. Voter turnout was a historic low—45 percent.⁷⁴ Was the Tory “big-tent” party beginning to fragment along old cleavages—Calgary/Edmonton, urban/rural, private sector/public sector—and new cleavages—greater autonomy from Ottawa, social issues like same-sex marriage and climate change?

With the 2004 victory, the PC Party had won ten consecutive elections and governed Alberta uninterrupted for thirty-three years. Alberta had become a one-party province. Outside of a few city-centre ridings, the only path to a seat in the legislature was through the PC Party. Anyone interested in a political career in provincial politics had to don the Tory blue silks. As I was soon to discover, at least a third of the MLAs—maybe half from the Edmonton area—would have joined the Liberals or even NDP in any other province.

This may explain why many of them were not particularly happy to see me come into the PC caucus and may also account for my future lack of success as a cabinet minister in steering the caucus in more conservative policy directions. This in turn led to the rise of the Wildrose Party; still more vote splitting on the Right; and, eleven years later, the end of the PC dynasty. Was this my fault? Or was I just a symptom of a party that was already losing its way? That is the subject of the rest of this book.